A few weeks ago I read this post by Kathy Escobar. I found the post disturbing, and needed to take some time and reflect on both my reaction to it and what I truly wanted to say about it.

Kathy is the co-pastor of The Refuge. I don’t know much about this church, but I get the idea that they minister to a lot of “the least of these“: Folks who are  “high need”. From what she has described in her post, it sounds like the “high need” people may outnumber the “normals” at The Refuge.

Because of this skewed demographic, Kathy gets a lot of pats on the back (and probably the head) for her good work, but not so much in the way of practical support (i.e. people who are willing to become part of The Refuge’s community). Mind you, there are plenty of folks who are willing to send folks to The Refuge: They just don’t want to join them there.

When Kathy has asked folks why they don’t join the fellowship of The Refuge, she gets answers like these:

““we just want to be around less broken people”

“i don’t have the issues these people have”

“we just don’t feel comfortable” ”

I have alluded to my discomfort with the poor in previous posts. So when I read this post, I felt rather, um. . .challenged? I don’t live anywhere near The Refuge, so participating isn’t an option for me, but I still felt this need to justify why I wouldn’t participate if I was a local.

To my chagrin, my responses were identical to those listed by Kathy. In fact, I began feeling a bit helpless, thinking that if I were to become involved in a community such as Kathy’s, I’d probably implode with so many demands on my time, so many broken people wanting to be my friend, so many things and people that I’d have to “fix”. It was just too much, and I shrugged and said “Sorry God, I just couldn’t do all that.”

It was then that I heard the still, small voice say:  “Who asked you to?”

Stunned, I had to sit back and think. I realized that what was making me so uncomfortable about participating in a community like Kathy’s had less to do with what would like be expected of me by the church community, and more of what I was expecting of myself.

The arrogance of my thinking and the largeness of my ego actually got me to laugh harder at myself than I have for a very long time: Here I was thinking that if I were to join such a church, I would be expected to meet needs, solve problems, and make friends with needy people. Never mind that:

1. I have a fair number of needs myself right now, and not a lot of resources (personal, emotional, spiritual, or material) to share with others.

2. While I might think of myself as SuperLainie, the fact is that neither I, nor anyone else, can “solve” other people’s problems.

3. These “needy people” just might have their own friends. And maybe they wouldn’t like me all that much anyway.

In other words, I was willing to withhold my presence from a community where I likely would have been welcomed and loved, all because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to live up to my own (not the church’s, not the pastors’, not God’s) expectations about what I “needed to do for them”.

(Kind of silly, eh?)

While I was reading Kathy’s post, I got the sense that the only expectation that she had of others was a willingness to be present: For her, for the church leadership, and for the church community. Yet I had to admit that, if I were local to The Refuge, I would have been reluctant to offer that simple thing because of my “whole-r than thou” attitude.

Of course, I am not everybody, and others may have different reasons for not participating in The Refuge (or churches like it. But I’d encourage those who have the same “uncomfortable” reaction to consider why they feel so squeamish. Is it because they are truly afraid of not getting their own needs met? Or are they laboring under a heavy burden of unreasonable self-expectation?

And if the later is true, are they willing to surrender that burden for a lighter one?

(Am I?)

]]> http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2008/10/12/who-asked-you-to-the-arrogance-of-self-expectation/feed/ 0 http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2008/09/05/porning-jesus-getting-off-on-delusions-of-edge/ http://www.lainiepetersen.com/2008/09/05/porning-jesus-getting-off-on-delusions-of-edge/#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:39:19 +0000 admin http://www.lainiepetersen.com/?p=282

So I was twittering and happened upon this blog post by Paul Mayers. The post puts forth the premise that many of the books out there on “being church” are pornographic:  They titalate, they excite, they tempt, they fulfill fantasies and they may even provide some release. But ultimately, when we put down the book, are we truly satisfied?

As Paul says:

“I guess I’m just tired of the flood of book, blogs, podcasts, commentators who with voyeur like pleasure lift up the skirts to show me how wrong church is.  How broken church is.  How institutional church is. How hypocritical church is.  How abusive, myopic, out of touch, conservative, liberal, self serving, fragmented, divisive church is.  How really it is not what Jesus ever intended to be and quite frankly why he if he showed up he wouldn’t be darkening the door of those kinda places.”

“Those kinda places.”

You mean those corner suburban churches with buildings and budgets and programs and paid clergy?

Well that’s what I thought when I read this post. How boring. How vanilla.

I then let my mind wander a bit. I even fantasized about a vanilla church. The church is filled with women in pressed skirts and blouses, bustling to prepare some coffee and sandwiches for a visit from Jesus. I see the men in their khaki shorts and Polo shirts, neatly trimming the hedges to make the church presentable for Jesus.  The pastors are wearing their best suits.

(Oh ho, hum!)

But then the fantasy “got away from me”. This is how it went:

Jesus comes to the church.

And he darkens their doorway.

He shakes the pastors’ hands.

He admires the shrubbery.

He gratefully accepts some coffee.

(Wait a minute, why isn’t he turning over tables? Why isn’t he spitting these folks out of his mouth?)

Instead he accepts their service, their hospitality. He is kind to the bustling group,  saying to a woman who is fretting that the coffee isn’t hot enough:  “You are worried about so many things, aren’t you?”, as he pats her on the shoulder.

He inquires after the senior pastor’s well-being, noting that the pastor is burdened with many things, but that the pastor should feel free to come to him with his burdens, and he (Jesus) will give that pastor rest.

(Then I snapped out of it.)

(Boy, that was weird.)

Does it make us angry to think of Jesus behaving this way? The idea that Jesus might desire intimacy and union with those who “just don’t get it”? Why doesn’t Jesus realize how vanilla these folks are? Maybe he just doesn’t know what he’s missing.

Maybe Jesus never read our porn.

© Igor Terekhov | Dreamstime.com

I often share the bus with a man who (I believe) is autistic. Unfortunately for those of us who must ride with him, he is a truly unpleasant person. He yells, he hurls racist insults, he fusses at people if they are sitting in “his seat”, and if he gets really upset he tends to throw things .

Public transportation is like that. It exists to take people where they need to be, but it doesn’t guarantee that they are going to enjoy the trip. Because it is open to all (and it is very difficult to get someone banned from public transportation, particularly in a large city such as Chicago), not all the people who use the transit system are the sorts of folks that we would normally want to associate with. Some riders are rude, insane, smelly, dirty, aggressive, inconsiderate, overly-talkative, loud, drunk, high . . . “the list,” as folks say, “could go on and on.”

I suppose the city could “clean house” and set really strict rules that would eliminate the troublemakers. Then those of us who are sensitive to strong odors would never again get sick from someone who reeks of perfume or who fails to bathe three days in a row. People of color could avoid racist insults. Studious types could bury their nose in a book, undisturbed by riders loudly chatting into cell phones, drunkenly singing, or begging for spare change. Nobody would have to shrink in fear when a mentally ill person acts out aggressively, nor would they have to dodge a talkative seatmate.

But then again, if all these rules were enforced, precious few people would be able to take the bus. In fact, many of the people least likely to be able to own a car (or even drive one) would no longer have access to mass transit. They’d have to walk everywhere in the cold/heat/rain/snow, and if they couldn’t get somewhere on foot, they’d be stuck.

Because of this, everyone accepts that public buses are not safe spaces. For anyone. If you take the bus, you are going to be insulted. You are going to be offended. You are going to be sickened by bad smells. You are going to have to see and hear things that you would rather not see and hear. You won’t always be able to get your work done. You won’t even always be able to get a seat.

(But you will get to where you need to go. So will everyone else on the bus.)

Churches, like buses, are not safe spaces. We can try and make them such: We can worry about offending others (outsiders or insiders) and institute processes to avoid this. We can try to accommodate “everyone” who walks through our doors (until we find out that we have managed to dis-accommodate someone else in the process). We can seek to protect ourselves and others from behavior that is sinful and wrong and hurtful and bewildering.

(And, of course, we will fail.)

Why? Well, like the public bus, the church (and indeed, the Kingdom of God) is open to everyone (though not all will choose to enter). Not just the great and the good, either. In fact, many of those who enter the church are there because they had run out of options. The church may be a less pleasant place for their presence, but do we really want to leave them out in the cold?

(In fact, we ourselves are likely part of the problem: Do we want to be left out in the cold too?)

Instead of processes to reduce friction, offense, and displeasure, perhaps we need to take a different approach: Perhaps we need to give up on the idea of church as a safe space, a shelter, a haven. Instead, maybe we need to learn to accept the discomfort and unpleasantness as part of what it is to be human and what it is to be church. Instead of blunting edges and rounding corners, perhaps we can investigate different ways of being present with people as they experience (and cause?) offense, discomfort, and pain, rather than fruitlessly trying to rid the church of its human, sinful elements.

(After all, we are all just trying to get to the same place. Aren’t we?)

During my last year of seminary, I was working as a ministerial intern at a historic, sophisticated mainline church. The church had its main service at 10am, with a “coffee break” at 11am and then there were three different educational opportunities offered to the congregation.

The coffee break included coffee, some sort of sweet breadstuffs, and juice served in a punchbowl. Early on in my internship, I would scoot to the reception hall right after services (if I wasn’t serving at the altar that day) and get ready to pour punch into cups for the congregation. I enjoyed doing this, as it gave me a chance to speak with people individually.

After a few weeks of this, I received a talking-to from my supervisor. He informed me that it was inappropriate for me, a seminary student and aspiring minister, to be pouring punch for the congregation. Especially since I was a woman, as my gender handicap already made it difficult for to cultivate a “professional image”. My seminary mentor, incidentally, agreed with my supervisor’s advice.

I wonder what they would have done if I had tried washing the congregation’s feet?